Long As I Can See The Light
by 50ftQueenie
Summary: "They march us into Hanoi and 'Beach Blanket Bingo' is playing at the drive-in". Tim returns from Vietnam with the line between reality and nightmare blurred inside his head. Rated M for explicit everything.
1. Chapter 1

SE Hinton owns the Shepard clan, **The Outsiders**, **That Was Then This Is Now**, and **Rumble Fish**.

Rated M for many damned-good reasons.

I don't consider this a cross-over story. It takes place post-Outsiders, though, within the timeframes of **TWT** and **Rumble Fish**.

This is a very short first chapter. It's more of a prologue, really. I'm finding that it doesn't break up in convenient places for decent-length chapters, so I apologize ahead of time that there may be real short ones and real long one.

Concrit is most welcome. If you're going to flame, sign your name.

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><p><strong>Long As I Can See the Light<strong>

_The greatest of all God's mysteries is the attraction between ugly men and beautiful girls. I mean why ugly men- or any men, for that matter- want beautiful chicks is no mystery, but it's lost on me what makes girls fall for the men they do. It never adds up. _

_On any given night, you can find the prettiest, freshest girl sitting up waiting. Maybe she's putting her __nervous energy__ to use cleaning the kitchen. Maybe she's pretending to be reading something on the couch by the light of the station ID on the television that she wasn't watching before the signal went off. I promise you what she's waiting up for- worrying herself old and ugly over- is some thick, dumb bastard with grease under his finger nails who ain't shaved in three days. Maybe she's trying to catch up to him with all her worrying, make herself as ugly as he is. Maybe he thinks it's her that keeps him young. They're both fucking mad as hatters. _

_Ask them about it (if you're dumb enough yourself to want to listen), and you can hear the signs of madness in what they tell you. She'll be telling you all about these virtues he has that no one else sees. Baby, you know what that is, right? It's called a hallucination. Let me have a hit of whatever you're dosing on and I bet I'll start believing he "has a gentle soul" too. _

_And the men are just as deranged, but not as articulate. You'll hear them say, "I just knew she was the one". Of course you did, fucker- because she's gorgeous and she still puts up with your shit. How could there possibly be more than one of those? _

_When I was in the camp in Hanoi- when we were allowed to come together and talk at all- some sentimental dumb fuck would always start talking about what he thought the women were doing back home. And then some other dumb fuck, this one just a sleazy as the first one was fruity, would make some crack about how he wished he could be watching. I never said nothing. I just wished to God that whatever the chicks were up to, they'd put it aside and join forces and take over. _

_Women would never have let this happen to us. They wouldn't have let this go on for so long. They're the ones who look at us- even the most wretched, ugly, soulless motherfuckers among us- and see that gentle soul. Left to the mercy of the men in power, we were going to be here forever. Those beautiful girls, however, might actually want us back._

April 1973

My little brother did almost five years at McAllister, but he still beats me back to Tulsa. His parole officer makes him get a house. What he's got is more like a cabin, if we were the kind of people who owned cabins. Curly's renting this place. It's tiny. It has one bedroom and a bathroom with a shower but no tub. His PO doesn't care if I sleep on the couch. I'm an American hero.

Curly's PO is new. He doesn't know us and he doesn't know the story. He doesn't put it together that Curly went down for malicious injury and arson and at the same time his big brother joined the Army and became a munitions specialist. We had some talents and we put them to use. I was better at not getting caught using them.

Or so I thought. They offered me the Army deal and I took it thinking I was getting off easy. I ended up in prison anyway, but not the kind of prison Curly was in. In some ways, I think I still am. Curly's happy as a pig in shit to be on the outside again. I've become accustomed to the feeling of being locked up. I like being in the dark, although I rarely sleep when I'm in it. I like the feeling of being wrapped up, confined. I can't shake the feeling that I might explode out in the open.


	2. Chapter 2

SE Hinton owns the Shepard clan.

This is a fast update, but I didn't want to leave it with just that short, short first chapter. I'll try to update on Tuesdays.

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><p><strong>Long As I Can See the Light<strong>

April 1973

It's April, almost May. I work days at a concrete supply company moving culverts and cinder blocks around a yard and sometimes going on deliveries. At night, Curly and I head over to Angel's to get caught up on Watergate because she and her old man have a TV.

It was Angel who got us started on it.

"My God, you got to watch this shit," she told us. "It's better than soaps. It's better than anything else on."

Neither me nor Curly know anything about soap operas, but we took her word for it and now we're both hooked. We bring groceries to Angel's house because she's cooking dinner for us nearly every night while the two of us and her old man, Jarris, watch those weasels try to dodge one question after another.

Some nights- and this is one of them- I'll admit I'm not watching anything at all. Angel and her old man are sniping. It's like being in my parent's house all over again. This time, though, it's my fault. Jarris and I used to fence car parts together, and when he came to me and told me figured he'd knocked up my sister, I told him I figured he'd better marry her. They hate each other. I hate seeing them together. At the time, though, it seemed like the best solution. He'd hate her, but he'd take care of her.

I pulled my first job when I was nine. Wasn't much of a job- I stole a gun out of one pawn shop and then pawned it off at another down the street. Got fifteen bucks for it. I got screwed on the deal, I know now, but at the time it seemed like a lot of money. I walked one more block to the grocery store and bought all the bread and jam and egg noodles I could carry. Saved back three dollars to pay up to the milk man. I fed my brother and sister until my parents came back.

It used to be my dream for Angela that she'd always have someone to take care of her. It was a stupid dream, but then most dreams are. When I sleep, I dream over and over again that I get captured because someone slashed the tires on our jeep in the jungle. That's not how it happened at all, but in the dream it's so real I can feel the warm rubber as a run my hand over the tire. I feel the pain when I slam my fist into the side of that jeep. Curly says I curse out loud in my sleep.

My dreams, my aspirations, in real life have all come out just as goofy. Jarris takes care of Angela, but I hear he's taking care of another girl down the block real good, too. She has a baby. Maybe it's his, maybe it ain't. That girl walks down the street and my sister sees red. She bitches to me and Curly about the girl. It ain't the girl's fault, I think as I sit and listen- it's your old man's. Really, it's mine.

All I wanted growing up was for us to be free. Me, and my brother, and my sister- free to walk around in whatever neighborhood we wanted. Free from worrying about where our next meal was coming from, free from the scrutiny of the social workers. I thought I could set us free if I ran this neighborhood.

It was a dumb dream. We got all those things eventually by way of growing up: when you grow up you become a prisoner of memories you can't turn off or the ones you can't quite reach. You become trapped by a growing feeling in your gut. You don't know what starts it, but you know once it starts to grow, there's nothing you can do to stop it.

Tonight is one of those nights. I can't keep my mind on the TV because something has a grip on my stomach. I'm covered in dust from the concrete company. It's caked to me because I woke up this morning in a sweat: _The van, the slashed tires, the nose of a rifle in my back. They march us into Hanoi and "Beach Blanket Bingo" is playing at the drive-in._ When Curly shook me this morning, I didn't know where I was and I couldn't get my bearings all damned day long.

I'm still not sure if I'm here- in my Angel's house- or in The Zoo in a cell dreaming about my little sister's surreal existence with her cheating son of a bitch husband and three kids back in Tulsa. The president is on TV chiding us for calling him a crook. I never did anything of the sort. This has to be part of the dream.

I'm standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. I lean against the door frame. I tell myself that it must be there because I can feel it.

The TV is on. I've got a beer in one hand and I'm holding Angel's baby girl against my hip with the other. They have three kids- Angel and Jarris. The older two are boys- Matthew and Paul. They're a little afraid of me. They like Curly, though, and right now they're climbing all over him on the floor while he's trying to watch the hearings.

The baby wipes her nose against my shirt. It's probably the dust on my shirt that's making her nose run. My sister walks by me and shakes her head, like me holding a baby is part of her waking nightmare.

Angela tells Matty and Paul to go get cleaned up for dinner. Once they're out of the way, she takes a shot at Curly with a pillow. I tell her I'm going to step out for a cigarette and try to hand the baby back. She tells me it's a nice night, take Marissa with me.

I set my niece down on the sidewalk. I turn away from her to light up. She can hold her own weight, and so she pulls herself up to stand holding the edge of the step.

"Stick around," I tell her.

She's got red hair, this little girl. She's a pretty little girl. We're going to have to watch this one- me and Curly. Angela says so all the time. She adds that we're going to have to because her dad sure as shit won't.

I can hear my brother-in-law's voice getting closer. He's cussing at the kids and Curly. He sounds just like my mom's husband did fifteen years ago. He's saying something to Angela as he comes through the door to tell me to come get dinner. I hear her voice too, but can't understand what she's saying. Jarris opens the door.

"Fucking little bitch," he grumbles about Angela.

I turn around and hit him as hard as I can.


	3. Chapter 3

SE Hinton owns the Tim Shepard and family.

**Long As I Can See the Light**

April 1973

This is the second time I've been to Jack Montgomery. I recognize that I'm there before I open my eyes because of the smell. It's bleach and disinfectant, but it always smells like someone just pissed his bed, too. Someone probably has. Some of these guys- they dope them up until they don't know to get up out of bed to piss.

The room has no outside windows. The first time, the room was painted a thick green. This time, the room is exactly the same only it's a peach color. There are four beds and a door with thick glass for the doctors to peek through. Someone has pissed his bed, yet again. I'm still too fogged up with thorazine to know if it's me.

My left arm aches. I peer at it with my eye half-open. There's a bruise. I'd guess I was putting up a fight when they first stuck me. After that, they've been giving me maintenance injections in the same vein. My elbow feels like someone hit it with a hammer.

I don't know why I'm here. I can take a guess. I must have been deemed a danger to myself. If you're a danger to others, they put you in jail. I've been there a couple of times since I've been back too. I guess I endangered Angela's husband's dumb ass. The other time I hear I was a danger to a park bench that I threw in a pond. Maybe I endangered some ducks that were swimming there.

I look around at the other beds. One is empty. Two of them are filled. Both occupants seem to be awake, but in a trance. I'd love to know what day it is, but these are not the people to ask.

I sit up slowly and the room tilts. I'm not ready to stand up, but I'm happy to see they haven't tied me down like last time. I must be getting less dangerous. The first time I was here, they tied my arms down.

"Hey," I say to anyone who will answer. Bed #1 doesn't even twitch. Bed #2 flinches and then blinks hard to get rid of the cobwebs.

"What's your name?" He asks.

"Shepard," I tell him and then- because we're in a VA and that stuff still matters here, I backtrack, "PFC Shepard. Out of Fort Riley."

"Sergeant Davis," he says. "Fort Hood. You been over?"

"Yeah. Yes, sir. I did two tours. Got captured and they took me up to Hanoi for two years during the second."

David nods. "Cambodia, but I'm not supposed to say that. Welcome home."

I can't tell from his voice if he's being sarcastic or if the sentiment is genuine. His voice has almost no inflection.

"What day is it?" I ask him.

"Fuck if I know. What are you here for?"

"I don't know. You?"

"I'm always here," he says. He sort of grins when he says it, but I get the feeling he isn't exactly too happy about it. "You in restraints?"

"No, sir."

"There's a button by the door. If you can walk, go over and push it. Someone will come…eventually. When they do, tell 'em I need a drink of water. And tell them to change that fucker's sheets."

I nod and swing my legs over the side of the bed. My eyes swim in my head when I put myself upright and I have to stand holding on to the mattress for a few seconds. Across the room, next to the door, that button seems a million miles away, and it seems to be moving.

Before I can get to it, someone walks by the door on the other side, sees me and stops. I can hear keys in the lock. An enormous orderly pokes his head and says, "What do you need? Just a minute. I'll tell her you're up."

"Can he have a drink of water?" I ask for Davis.

"I'll ask." The door shuts and he locks it up, although it's only a matter of seconds before the nurse arrives and he has to open it again.

She has a small paper cup of water on a tray for Davis and one for me.

"Are you hungry?" She asks me.

I have to think about it. I shake my head.

"Maybe after, then," she says, but doesn't say "after" what. "How do you feel? You feel like talking?"

"I feel like asking someone what the hell happened…ma'am."

She doesn't even look up from where she's now checking Davis' chart. My guess is she gets cussed at a lot. She's a good-looking girl and small. Guys here think they can intimidate her, which is probably why she travels with the orderly. I can see, though, that I don't intimidate her at all.

"The doctor would like to see you. He'll tell you about that. He has some time right after lunch. If you don't want lunch, Vincent will take you to get cleaned up, if you like."

I nod. "What day is it?"

"Wednesday. April 25th."

"Nineteen seventy-three, right?" I ask, trying to get a smile out of her.

She nods. She doesn't know if I'm kidding or not. I nod back and point to Vincent to indicate that I'll just go with him then.

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><p>The doctor is in uniform and he and I salute one another when I'm deposited in the doorway of his office by Vincent. I feel foolish, like I did when they opened up The Zoo. We were all dressed in VC pajamas then, too small because we're all taller than most Vietnamese guys, and I felt like a fool standing in front of those uniformed Rangers. I should have been elated, but I felt embarrassed for them to see me like that.<p>

It's the same thing now. This uniformed Army doctor is saluting me and I'm dressed in a hospital gown, scrub pants and slippers. The only thing that gives me away as a soldier is my hair.

"Good morning, Shepard. Have a seat." The doctor isn't even looking at me now. He's got his head in my file. I sit down and wish that I could just read it myself.

"Had a little trouble with your brother-in-law, I see," he says.

"I guess. I don't remember, sir."

He nods. "That's what you said the last time, too. Were you drinking with your brother-in-law when this happened?"

"When what happened, sir?"

"Well, you attacked your brother-in-law, it says. Your sister...is Angela your sister?"

"Yes, sir. Is the baby okay? Did I hurt the kids?"

"Doesn't say. Says you took off from his house after a fight. You sister called the authorities. You had done quite a number on yourself when they found you. Lost quite a bit of blood. Were you drinking when you got in the fight with your brother-in-law?"

I have to think about it. Most likely we were.

"Some, sir."

"Well." He closes the file and leans back in his chair to look at me. He can't be too much older than I am. He's been to medical school, though. He has a framed diploma on his wall, and some kind of framed medal, too. He doesn't seem like too bad a guy.

"Obviously that has to stop, the drinking. How do you feel about that- if I tell you to stop drinking?"

I shrug. "I don't know. Never drank much before."

"Before you were sent over?"

I nod.

"You find you're drinking more now?"

"I guess so, sir."

"Why would you say that is?"

I don't know. Curly's always drinking. It's always around the house. If he bought soda, I'd drink that. Curly's not supposed to be drinking at all. It's a condition of his parole. I should be making him buy soda.

"Because it's there, sir."

He raises his eyebrows at me, and I feel stupid for saying it. It sounds like I can't make up my mind for myself. If everyone else had a beer and jumped off a bridge, would you do it too, Shepard?

He asks me about my living arrangements and my job. I tell him I'm afraid I'll lose the job. I've been gone for three days. He says he can write me a note, if that will help. He asks me if I've ever been to an AA meeting. I ask if _he_ thinks I'm an alcoholic.

He smiles a little. "I don't know, Shepard. Do _you_ think you're an alcoholic?"

I tap my fingers on the arm of the doctor's chair and then rub my hands over my head. This is exactly what happened to my old man. When I was a kid, I didn't know to put the two together- the way he acted and his time overseas. I remember my ma crying once and saying to me- or just saying out loud and I happened to be there, "he wasn't always like this…yes, he was…he used to be different, but I should have seen it coming. When he came home, something was switched on or off. Something was switched off."

We never called my old man an "alcoholic". For one thing, we were kids and didn't know the word, plus it just sounded too clinical in comparison to his antics. We called him a drunk. My mother called him that to his face. I heard people whisper about it at school. That's what I told Curly and Angel he was when they asked why he didn't come around anymore and they seemed to understand even though they were little at the time.

"I've never been to an AA meeting, sir," I tell him. He's smart enough to know I'm dodging his question, yet I persist in doing it anyway. It ain't for his benefit that I'm trying to dodge.

He asks me if I'd like help finding one. I tell him that my brother's on parole and he's supposed to be going. He has a list. The doctor asks me if my brother has been going to meetings.

I can't help but grin at that. "My best guess is no, he has not, sir."

The doctor tells me I can be released tomorrow and asks if I'd like to spend some time in the community room. Honestly, that's the last place I want to be. I'm not feeling real communal, but I figure they must have a paper there or some books, so I tell him okay.

I spend the day in the community room. At night, I don't have to go back to the locked room. They put me on a ward and I don't sleep for a minute. Every time I nod off, someone cries out in his sleep or wakes up screaming. Just as the sky is getting light, one guy goes off and the one in the bed next to him tries to smother him with his pillow. Me and two others run to pull him off, but it's like he's possessed. His strength is super-human. We can barely hold him until the orderlies come running and knock him out.

After that, nobody can sleep and the orderlies start making coffee. I stand on my bed and look out of the high window at the town of Muskogee. I remember standing on a guy's shoulders once to see over a low spot in the wall of the camp. Hanoi was bombed out and gray all around us. Muskogee is green and gold in the morning light. They're not the same city, but the feeling of being exposed won't go away.


	4. Chapter 4

SE Hinton owns Tim and Curly and The Outsiders.

**Long As I Can See the Light**

April 1973

Her name is Darby.

I know it's her Curly's trying to tell me about as he drives me back to Tulsa even though he can't remember her name. He ran into her at the grocery store while I was in Muskogee. He calls her "You know, the chick from The Dingo, Two-Bit's chick, the one who used to fool around with the black kids". He doesn't need to bring up The Dingo or what we did there or why we thought we were justified in doing it. I know he's talking about Darby.

"What did she say? What were her exact words?"

He's already said it once. He's irritated with me. I can tell by the way he's cracking his neck and shifting in the driver's seat. He tells me again.

"I said 'whose kid' and she said 'your brother's'. That's it. That's how the whole thing transpired."

He drawls out the word "transpired" like he needs to sound it out for me. That's what Curly does with the few three syllable words he possesses in that head of his- he pisses me off.

"Did you ask her how she knows that?"

"No."

"Did she say anything else?"

"No. She just went back to getting her groceries."

"Is it a boy or a girl?"

"A boy."

I might have been relieved if he'd said it was a girl. I could continue to neglect a girl, if I knew there was one in my life. I've always heard that a boy should have a father. Curly and I never had one, and look what happened to us.

"How old?"

"How should I know?"

"Does he walk? Talk? Drive?"

"Didn't see him drive anything." Curly grins at that. "Wait- no, he had one of those little toy cars. I think it was a Dart. So, he can drive a Dodge Dart as long as it's small enough to fit in his hand. And he can walk. Didn't talk to me, though."

He must be around the right age. If I knocked her up at that party in '68, but then she was with the black kid from The Dingo too.

"Does he look like me?"

Curly looks at me- frowning- as though he's never really looked at me before. He shrugs.

"No. Not really, but he's a kid."

I bite the bullet and ask, "Is he white?"

"Well, yeah, he's white. He just looks like her. I guess not as dark. She's all Italian-looking. Is she Italian?"

I shake my head. She's what the rest of us are who grew up around here- what they call "black Irish".

Curly waits for me to elaborate, but I don't. He fiddles around with his lighter, gets a cigarette lit and smokes for a bit.

Then he says, "I guess maybe he looks like you. I don't know what you looked like when you were that age. He looks like…shit, maybe he looks a little like Angel. No, you know who he looks like? Matty. I never seen him when he was little either, but Angel used to send me pictures. Yeah, he totally looks like Matty. Don't know what it is…"

I interrupt him because I really don't want to hear anymore.

"What's his name?"

"I don't know. Didn't ask. I think she called him Evan or Everett…Everett."

Everett Shepard. I don't like the sound of it. The names don't sound good together, but he probably doesn't have my name. She wasn't thinking about how it sounded with Shepard when she picked it out.

I guess what they call morbid curiosity gets the best of me. I resign myself to it.

"You know where she lives?"

"Nope." Curly tosses his cigarette butt out the window.

"She works at the school, though," he tells me. "At Will Rogers. She's like a…shit, not a teacher, but she works at the school, like a helper. She works with kids who need help."

"Like retarded kids?"

"No, like kids like me. The way I was in school."

"You going to make me repeat myself?"

"Fuck you, Tim. No, like regular kids who just need some help staying on track. She keeps them on track."

"So she's a conductor…" I wait for him to catch it. He doesn't.

"So, you going to go looking for her?" He asks.

I don't know. I don't want to go anywhere within a stone's throw of Rogers, that's for damned-sure. I suppose I could watch for her to come out of the building some day and follow her. That would be creepy, though, if she caught me doing it. Maybe I could just ask around.

The real question is why? Why do I want to meet this kid? And what good would I be to him anyway? A lot of good I ever did Curly and Angel. A lot of good I am to myself.


	5. Chapter 5

SE Hinton owns Tim Shepard.

**Long As I Can See the Light**

June 1968

Her name is Darby and she might be Two-Bit Mathews' girl. She was once. I heard that somewhere. I know her name because we went to high school together and I'd occasionally trade her a joint for her answers on Biology exams. She was good in Biology. I got out of there with a C on exams alone. I never had to do any homework.

She ain't my type of girl, or- really- she ain't the type of girl who'd ever give me a second glance, which makes her not my type. I never felt the need, in high school, to give my time to girls who were inconvenient.

She has a pretty smile, but usually she's serious. She's thinking about being somewhere else.

I haven't seen her since high school, but recognize her right off when she walks into the party at Art Baker's house. The fashion of the late 60s suits her. Her hair is down and straight. She's wearing some kind of smock thing with big, purple flowers. I'm a little drunk otherwise I'd never notice a thing like that. Drunk or not, though, I'd notice how short that dress is. It's like she's really wearing nothing more than an over-sized shirt. She's dark-skinned and she has skinny, dark legs. She's not wearing any shoes. I wonder if maybe she's been wading in a pond somewhere.

I'm walking a dangerously stupid line: I'm blazed enough to think that asking her if she's been wading in a pond is a good way to start a conversation, and I'm still sober enough to walk across the room and do it.

She smiles when she sees me coming. Before I can ask her about the imaginary pond, she says to me, "I get a dime bag for Bio notes these days, you know."

And I say, "Huh?" like a fucking idiot.

"Biology notes…like in high school…" She shakes her head and then pushes her hair back. "How you been, Shepard?"

"I been alright. You here all by yourself?"

She nods.

"How come?" I don't see Mathews around, but I want a free-and-clear that they're not together.

"_How come?_ Are _you_ here by yourself?"

"I'm with you," I tell her. I think I'm pretty smooth. I guess it rubs off because she laughs. She lets me put my hand on her back and lead her in to the kitchen for a drink.

We walk around the house, drinking. We walk out into the yard and smoke a joint. We stand closer to each other than need be to speak. She lets me push her hair back over her shoulder and lay my hand against the back of her neck. I suggest it and she agrees to go back into the house.

I pause before opening the porch door for her and ask, "You going to kiss me or what?" She does. We stand there and kiss. I hold my hand against the porch door, trapping a couple of people who were trying to leave. They can just stand there and wait. Where do they got to be that's so important?

I ask her if she wants to leave.

"You can't drive," she tells me. "No way."

I open the door, telling her as I follow her through, "well, then, shall we go see if Art made his bed this morning?"

She turns around and kisses me again. She walks backwards, guided by me, kissing me through the house. People have to be watching us. In the real world, we're making a scene. In our world, we're in a vacuum. There's no one here but us.

"Jeez, didn't make his bed," she says when we get to Art's room.

I lock the door. I kick off my shoes and wonder again where hers are. I pull that dress-smock-shirt thing up over her head to see what she's got on underneath. Not much. God bless 1968. She ain't even wearing a bra.

She tugs my t-shirt off and I drop down in front of her to kiss her belly. I kiss her through her panties, holding her hips in my hands and pressing her towards my mouth. I get her panties off and keep kissing until she says my name. I stand up and toss her on to my shoulder and carry her kicking and giggling over to the bed.

I drop her down and she bounces. She sits up, kneels on the mattress and unhooks my belt. Something crashes downstairs. I'd guess a fight broke out. Darby's got me out of my jeans and her beautiful mouth on me. Her lips are so beautiful. She has such a pretty smile. I decide I want to see her smile again and push her back on the bed. I lay down next to her. She lies next to me on her stomach and kisses me. Whatever's going on downstairs causes the whole house to shudder. I pull Darby on top of me and wrap my arms around her.

We go on for hours. We try everything we can think of in our drunk, stoned, warped twenty-year old minds. We fall off the bed a couple of times. We stay on the floor for a while. We crawl back into bed and take a nap, and then wake each other up to do it again.

She tells me she's going to have a carpet burn on her back. I tell her to roll over and let me kiss it. She's right- she's got a hell of a burn on her shoulder blade. It's bleeding a little. There's blood on Art's sheets. I like that, for some reason. It makes our presence in this room seem permanent.

I wake up when Art starts pounding on the door wanting something in his room. I'm alone. Darby threw a blanket over me before she left. She took her clothes and disappeared. Maybe she went looking for her shoes. I'm still tired and my whole body aches.

"Come on, Shepard," Art is yelling. "I need my keys. Who you got in there?"

"No one," I tell him. I'm too tired to open the door for him. Let the fucker walk to work.


	6. Chapter 6

SE Hinton owns the Shepard Gang, The Dingo, and Two-Bit.

**Long As I Can See the Light**

June 1968

Four years gone since they desegregated the schools and everything else, and Tulsa still ain't having it. For as little as I ever went to school, it sure still runs my life. We didn't know it as kids, but our neighborhood boundaries and our gang alliances were all drawn out by the school board. That's why Will Rogers has stayed white (with the occasional Indian) and Booker T. Washington up in Greenwood is black.

The one step we've made towards desegregation since high school is The Dingo. The Dingo Drive-In is in Greenwood and is most famous for being the place where a girl got shot in '64 during a race riot. We started heading up to The Dingo for movies in '65. The wounds aren't healed and the interactions are tense, but the cheap, second-run movies are too much for our poor, white-trash asses to resist.

I'm leaning against the hood of Art Baker's car. I see Two-Bit Mathews enter the drive-in first, and then I see Darby with him. It doesn't bother me. In fact, it pleases me and it's sort of a relief that she looks as good tonight when I'm sober as she did three weeks ago at that party.

Two-Bit sees me, grins, and flips me off. Darby sees me and the look in her eyes is almost like fear. She tugs against Mathews as he starts to walk towards me. I smile at her and wave, enjoying her embarrassment. Two-Bit moves as if propelled by a motor; she has no hope of escaping coming over to say hello.

"What's up, Shepard?" Mathews releases Darby's hand from his and claps it into mine.

"Whole lot of nothing. Hey, Darby."

Her eyes widen when I speak to her.

"Ignore the rumors, Darby," Two-Bit tells her. "Shepard don't really bite."

"Much," I add and wink at her.

Two-Bit begins to talk about someone's car. He encircles her with his arm, trying to bring her into the conversation, but she resists. In a quiet voice, she tells him, "I'm gonna…" but then doesn't say what she's going to go do. They kiss as he lets her go. He doesn't seem to notice that she can't get away quick enough.

"You've met Darby, right?" He says.

"Yeah, knew her in high school."

"Yeah, me too. We go on and off."

"I wouldn't think she'd be blonde enough for you."

He grins. "You'd think that, but she's got other qualities to where I can overlook it."

"I can imagine."

He goes back to talking about the car, but I keep imagining. Darby has disappeared into the crowd at the concession stand. I keep right on half-listening to Two-Bit and staring into space and imagining how she smells like pot and baby shampoo. She reappears from the concession stand with a drink, but doesn't come back in our direction. She looks back to see if Two-Bit is watching and then walks away from us towards a collection of rickety playground equipment next to the concessions where the black kids from Booker T are hanging out.

Just as natural as can be, she walks up to a crowd of boys hanging on and around the swings. She snatches a bagged bottle from one of them and smiles at him like she knows him when she takes a drink. He looks back over his shoulder, but doesn't see me watching. He lets her take another pull before he takes his bottle back.

Another one of the Booker T kids steps away from the crowd. He bumps Darby's shoulder as he walks by, grinning. She knows him, too, but her reaction is different. She's more reserved- maybe shy. Together, they move away from the crowd and over towards an off-kilter merry-go-round. She sits down and he gets it started spinning and then hops on beside her.

Two-Bit is still talking. The subject has jumped from the car to something heard on the radio in his car on the way over. No wonder he can't hold on to Darby, I'm thinking. He's no longer even aware that she's gone.

She and the high school kid are still spinning on the merry-go-round, but he says something that makes her sit up straight and drag her feet to slow it down. She jumps off and walks quickly to metal slide. She starts to climb the steps into the air. He follows and Darby stops at the top. He stops a couple of steps below her. They're at each other's eye level and very close. They've stopped talking. The high school kid is shaking his head about something. When he puts his hand over Darby's on the railing, I say to Two-Bit:

"Mathews, what's your girl doing?"

"Darby? Who the hell knows…she's…" He follows my gaze and his voice drops off. Then he shouts out, "Darby, what the fuck are you doing?"

From where I'm standing I can see that she looks sick. Her body seems to shrivel. She and the black kid look one another in the eye. Neither one says a word. He pushes off and jumps down from the slide. He back into the group of boys from Booker T who are moving in to head off Two-Bit.

Darby takes the slide down. Got to love that. Her old man's charging over there like a bull and about to insight race riot #2 and Darby goes and climbs the rest of the way up the slide. She jumps before she hits the ground and lands on her feet. She puts herself between Two-Bit and the black kid.

She says something to him. Instead of continuing on his path to put that kid's lights out, Two-Bit turns on her, takes her by the arm and starts heading back to where we are. It makes me a little nervous. He can get a little rough when he's mad. I can't let him hit her here. Her buddy from Booker T ain't going to let that happen either.

They get close enough that I can hear her arguing with him.

"Can I say something?" She asks.

"Say it in the car."

Two-Bit jerks her behind him in between me and Art. Darby bumps into my chest and she looks up at me. She's pleading with her eyes, but she doesn't say anything.

"Hey," the black kid shouts. "Hey, don't be handling her like that, man."

"Alvin, just drop it," Darby says.

One of his companions is saying, "Al, just be cool, man."

"Do you know these guys?" Two-Bit asks her.

I hear Curly saying from behind Art, "I want to say 'yes'."

"Shut it, Curly," I tell him. I turn to Two-Bit, ignoring Darby's big eyes. "What do you want me to do, man?"

Two-Bit shrugs. He answers me, but he's looking at her when he says it: "Do whatever the hell you want. Burn the place down, for all I care."

He jerks her by the arm again and takes her out of my line of sight. When he does it, I can feel the black kid surge forward. His buddies hold him back. Darby and Two-Bit are shouting. A car door slams and her voice is silenced.

I don't hear another word out of her until 1973.

* * *

><p>AN: I took a couple of liberities with history here. Yes, there is a historically African-American neighborhood in Tulsa called Greenwood. It sits just north of the Curtis house location in the film.

The Commission on Civil Rights made the following observations about the Tulsa School District Boundaries in a 1977 report: "Up until 1954 all Tulsa schools were totally segregated by race. In the fall of 1955, school attendance zones in Tulsa were redrawn, utilizing the neighborhood school concept, but without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin. The new zones placed some black children in previously all white schools, and some white children in previously all black schools. This realigning of attendance zones, however, was negated by the school board's policy of allowing any student to transfer from a school in which his or her race was minority to a school where his or her race was a majority upon the request of the parents. In May of 1965 the Tulsa public schools' plan for desegregation was submitted to the U.S. Commissioner of Education." At the time of The Outsiders, Tulsa schools were still- in effect- segregated.

A girl was shot and killed during a riot in Greenwood in 1964. My own imagination made The Dingo the site of that riot. I have no idea where Hinton imagines The Dingo to be.

_Thanks to somebluedecember for reading the first half of this and helping me make some decisions. It was a lot of reading. There are two entirely different versions._

The name Darby- why, you ask? It's not a common name, and it's more often used as a male name. I first heard it in "Darby's Song" by Lucero. It just stuck in my head. Once upon a time, I was going to use it for Two-Bit's sister.


	7. Chapter 7

SE Hinton owns Tim Shepard.

**Long As I Can See the Light**

May 1973

The note from the doctor at Jack Montgomery does the trick- I'm back on the job, but not until Monday. The foreman says I have to take a day without pay, so I'm at home Friday afternoon catching up on the Watergate hearings on the radio.

There's a knock at the door. The only person who knocks is Curly's PO. I look around for empty beer bottles and my shirt. I answer the door with my t-shirt still balled up in my hand. Darby's standing there looking pretty in her work clothes. She's wearing red and yellow. I remember overhearing my sister on the phone once saying to a friend that yellow's a hard color to pull off. Darby's pulling it off.

She's thinner than when we were twenty, maybe a little too thin, but not thin like a junkie. She looks uncomfortable standing on the step. Still got a pretty smile, though.

"Hey, Tim."

"Hey."

"Uh, I ran into Curly, and I figured you'd be looking for me. I figured I should find you and- you know- whatever Curly told you…"

"You want to come in?" I hope she doesn't. The place is a mess and it's dark and I wouldn't want to sit on any of our furniture if I was her.

She presses her lips together like she's trying to think of a polite way to say 'no'.

"You want to just sit here?" I ask her and point to the step.

She sits down. I put my shirt on and join her.

"Where is he?" I ask her. There is no kid with her as far as I can see.

"Everett? I left him with my brother. I didn't figure it would be right to just throw him at you."

I nod. "Thank you."

Then there's silence. If she's waiting for me to bubble over with questions, she doesn't know me as well as she thinks. I'd rather let her speak first. That way I'll know what she thinks is important.

"Been a while," she says to the yard in front of us.

"Yeah. Sorry about that." And I am. I'm sorry for the way things went down at The Dingo, and I'm sorry I never saw her again after.

She looks at me, puzzled, for a second and then looks back out at the yard.

"I wouldn't have wanted to see you after that anyway. Not after what y'all did."

"So what's different now?"

"About five years," she says, and that makes sense.

We're supposed to be adults now, but to me it feels like we're dead. We're trying to figure what to do with this life we made when we were kids, when we were people who don't exist anymore. We don't know why we did the things we did back then. We wouldn't do it the same today.

"Did you ever like me?" She asks.

I tell her, "I thought you were pretty. What about you? Did you ever like me?"

"We didn't know each other, Tim." Her voice is so full of regret. The only thing to do is crack wise over it.

"You never thought I was pretty?"

She doesn't say anything. She's not here to play around. Without turning my head, I look her up and down. Looking at her makes me curious what a kid of hers must look like. He must be a beautiful kid, even if he's mine. Even if he favors my family, like Curly says.

Darby asks me, "so, are you alright?"

"Am I alright? Do I look not alright?"

"You look thin."

"So do you."

"Tim, are you okay after being over there?"

I nod. "Okay as can be expected. I got shot once, but it passed through. I'm alright."

"What was it like?"

Well, I can't tell her that it was "alright" over there. She isn't going to fall for that.

"Which part?"

"Any of it."

"Well, before the camp, it was all a lot of wandering around. It was chaotic. All we did was wander around, and it seemed like it was dark all the time. Except it was dark green because we were in the jungle. There were big snakes, too."

She smiles a little bit at that.

"And there were tigers," I offer since she seems to be impressed by the snakes. "I seen one once. Their stripes really work. They stay hidden good, and then they're just there."

"What about after?"

She means the camp and I would rather just keep talking about tigers. I don't know what to tell her.

"It was in the middle of a big city, so it was like being here except you can't leave the yard."

That's not even a chip at the surface of what it was like, but I have no desire to tell her anything more. I don't want to talk about it with anyone I have to explain it to.

"Are you checking me out, or what?" I ask her.

"What do you mean?"

"You want to know if it's safe for me to meet this kid or am I too batshit? That it?"

"Do you want to meet him?"

I don't know. "What would you tell him?"

She's thought about this. "I'd tell him you're my friend, to start out with. I'd tell him your name is Tim, and you and I are friends. He's only four. He doesn't ask a lot of questions beyond that. He's more likely to ask you something way out of left field- like where your mom is or if you like cars."

"I have answers for those," I tell her. "So, we're friends?"

"Were we ever not?"

I can't help smiling at her. She seems offended that I'd ask. I need a cigarette, so I pull my pack out of my shirt pocket. I offer her one and she shakes her head.

"Don't smoke anymore."

"Don't smoke anything?"

"Nope. I work at the school now. Have to keep up appearances, you know. Besides, who would I buy from? Probably one of my students."

"I'm sure Curly could hook you up."

"I'll keep that in mind. You can't smoke at my place. Everett has asthma."

I nod. On first consideration, I take this as a sign of weakness in the kid, but then I remember that my old man had it.

"Where is your place?" I ask her, and we put the thing in motion. I'm her friend Tim. I have to come during the day, not around bedtime. Just stop by and say "hello" and we'll go from there.

She tells me where she lives, and it's in a neighborhood that I would consider to be even worse than this one. When she stands up to walk back to it, I find that I want to go with her to make sure she gets there safely. I let her go, though, and imagine her body swishing inside her skirt as she makes her way back to her apartment.


	8. Chapter 8

SE Hinton owns The Outsiders and the Shepard Clan

**Long As I Can See the Light**

May 1973

Curly has his PO's list of AA meetings stuck up to the refrigerator with a magnet. If he framed the thing and hung it over his bed he still wouldn't be fooling anyone. There are about seven different meetings on the list. Most of them are at churches. One is only for women. There's another one at some student center just off the UT campus. It says it's on Tuesdays and seven o'clock. I recognize the contact name, and so I stop by at six to feel out the situation.

Steve Randle has always been a crank, but tonight he just looks tired. I figure I must remind him of the gang days and hanging out with Soda Curtis. Something tells me, these days, I might like Steve a lot more than I did back then, but I ain't going to find out any time soon. He isn't ready to hang out.

I ask him what's going on, and he tells me a bunch of stuff I already know via Curly and the grapevine. Steve got hooked on smack in Vietnam. Losing his best friend didn't help, but he was using before that. He came back and spent some time cleaning up at Muskogee, then he fell off, then he went to McAllister long enough to clean up for good. Or "for now", he says and gives me the "one day at a time" line.

He's on the GI Bill now, going to school. He wants to be a counselor. He's been clean long enough to run meetings. He says this one's a good one; most of the guys are vets. I can't figure why that would be a good thing at all. To me, it just means there are far too many of us.

He's been pushing tables back against the walls and pulling the chairs into a circle since I came in. I help him move the tables. I told him I was fresh out of Jack Montgomery and that the doctor recommended this.

"You want to sit?" He asks me.

I sit down. He drags a chair across the floor, turns it around and straddles it. He picks up his coffee.

"Alright, first- a pop quiz. If you were in Jack, I got to ask: Have any thoughts of harming yourself or someone else?"

"Just Curly, but I've been having those thoughts since 1951."

"Haven't we all. Have you ever made a plan to harm yourself or another person?"

"No, I usually wait for Curly to piss me off first. There's no plan. There's no plot against Curly."

Steve grins.

He asks me, "You still got your service weapon?"

"Now, you know I don't, Randle. They take those back in San Diego when you go through discharge."

"Yeah, I been through San Diego, smart ass, and I still got mine. You got yours?"

"Nah, I don't. I was a prisoner for a while. They sent me straight home from there. I never got my weapon back."

"What about Curly? What else you got at home?"

"Curly's a felon. He can't own a gun."

"Seriously, Shepard, it's me. Quit trying to shovel me that shit. You got anything in the house you could hurt yourself with?"

"Kitchen knives, but I have no plans to use them. I promise."

He shrugs. "Fine. I got to ask. Where were you a prisoner?"

"The Zoo. Hanoi."

"How long?"

"Couple of years. I guess a little less than that- twenty-two months."

"Jesus. I heard about that place. You ain't going to tell me that was like spending a couple of nights in County."

"No, it wasn't like that at all. So, what's this gig all about? I ain't real excited about attending meetings, and no one's making me. There's no court order."

"Well, I ain't going to make you do shit. You know that. I will tell you that you got to talk about this stuff, though. It gets easier if you talk about it."

"I been through a lot of shit, Randle. In some people's books, my whole life's been one shitty episode. I never talked about it to no one before."

"You and I both know what we been through ain't greasers and Socs, man. That shit doesn't even count, not by a long shot."

"I don't even know if this is the place. I mean, I can't get anyone to tell me - am I an alcoholic?"

"Probably. If you're sitting here asking me the question, you probably are. I never yet had anyone just show up because they were interested in the process of it all. You can get free coffee at the gas station. Can I ask you something?"

I nod.

"Since you been back, how many times you been to Muskogee?"

"A couple."

"So you've been in a psychiatric in-patient facility twice in four months? You ever been to one before the Army?"

"Nope."

"Then I'd say there's a problem."

"I got a question for you- there's this girl…"

Steve grins at me and runs his fingers through his hair. He used to grease it back real smooth. Without anything in it, it's curly and kind of wild. He shakes his head. "That's also a problem. Girls are always a problem. Leave the girls be for a while. Straighten your shit out first. That's the textbook response."

"But she's got my kid. Am I supposed to not have him for a kid for a while, too?"

"Yeah, that's a different story. Who you got a kid with?"

"Darby Crawford. Remember her?"

"Shit, Two-Bit's girlfriend? Yeah, I remember her. Pretty and stoned, that's what I remember. Were you sneaking around behind Two-Bit's back?"

"I wasn't sneaking around on him. I wasn't his girlfriend. I don't think she was at the time either."

We're both laughing now. Steve's laughing at me. I'm laughing just because I brought up Darby. If I say her name out loud it feels less like I'm talking about someone else's life. Maybe Steve is right.

"Where is Two-Bit anyhow?" I ask.

"McLeod. Next six to nine. That's months, not years- it's not that dire. DUIs and violations on DUIs."

"Hmm, I guess he should have been going to meetings."

"That's the spirit," Steve says. He looks over my shoulder. There's a clock on the wall behind me. "Shepard, I got to finish setting this up. You sticking around?"

I don't want to stick around. If I could just sit and shoot the shit with Steve, I'd stay all night. I don't want to stay if there's going to be other people, strangers.

"I promised Curly I'd do some shit with him." I promised nothing to Curly. I haven't seen him since we turned off the news last night and went to bed.

"Yeah, you're full of it. Up to you. You know where to find me."

I nod and stand up. I shake Steve's hand. As I come to the door, I think to ask him about that girl he use to see in high school- Evie- but then I don't know if he's still with her. I don't really know much of anything anymore.


	9. Chapter 9

SE Hinton owns Tim Shepard.

**Long As I Can See the Light**

May 1973

I chuck my cigarette into the storm drain and turn down into the alley where Darby's apartment is. She lives above a store- a dry cleaner's- but the entrance is through the alley. I don't think she has a car. There's none parked there.

The first red splatter on the ground at my feet makes my stomach tighten up. A few steps farther and the splatters turn to footprints- red and caked in the dust. I can't hear the city sounds around me. There's a roar in my ears, like a hurricane wind blowing through thick trees. There's nothing to tell me where I am. I feel like I'm in a tunnel following those red child's footprints in the beam of a flashlight.

The footprints turn to splatters- green, red, and blue. It's obvious now it's paint, but it still makes my heart hurt in my chest whenever one of those little red foot prints goes tracking through the other splatters of color.

I can smell the paint now- it's laid down that thick. I know the smell of blood, and I've seen it pooled on the ground before just like this. This isn't blood. I make myself blink hard and then look away from the paint and up at the sky. It's a bleached-out late afternoon sky. It's hard to make out the outline of the clouds.

The red footprints and other colors lead up a white set off stairs to a second floor porch. I climb up and there's Darby at the top. She's on her knees with a child in her lap. She's cleaning red paint off of his bare feet with a washcloth.

She smiles up at me.

"Jackson Pollack stop by?" I ask her. My stomach is so sick I can hardly speak.

"Just this guy," she says. She's rolling her eyes but still smiling. She nods towards the western sky. "It's going to rain. It'll all wash off."

The boy in her lap is bare-chested except for a few blue patches where he has wiped paint on himself. Curly's right- he's not as dark as his mother. He's more like me, the kind who will tan dark as hell in the summertime and be pasty all winter. He has brown hair and enormous, round eyes. At first glance, I would say that he's almost too pretty to be a boy.

He laughs when she tickles him cleaning the paint off of his belly. He laughs like Curly used to- gravely from deep in his belly and then ending with a little squeak.

Darby says something soft like, "jeez, you" and then stands him up to face me, giving him a little swat on the butt. He laughs again.

"Everett, this is my friend Tim. Can you say 'hi'?"

I squat down to his eye level and put my hand out to shake his. He says "hi" to me and then leans back against Darby, grinning.

"Are you being shy?" She asks him. I know the answer to that. He ain't shy; it's all flirting. He's so much like Curly was- I can see why Curly missed the resemblance himself.

"You want to come in?" She asks me.

Before I can answer, Everett says, "No, Mama. I don't want to go in."

"You want to walk?" I ask him. He's going to do nothing but get covered in paint again if we stay around here.

He nods. Darby tells him to get his shirt and he darts for the door. Once inside, he turns back and looks out at us.

"It's on your bed," Darby says. She knows he's there without turning back to look. She shakes her head at me. Everett disappears into the darkness of the interior.

"That alright? If we go for a walk?" I ask her.

"Sure." She shrugs. "If it's alright with you if we get rained on."

"Well, I got my car. We can drive around."

"Let him walk. Let him run it off," she says.

We wait for Everett and they follow me down the stairs.

Everett runs ahead of us down the alley. Darby whistles at him when he gets to the mouth and he stops. She points to the left and he takes off again. For a second he's out of sight. When we turn the corner, he's about halfway down the block, waiting for us and dawdling, looking up at the sky.

I say to her, "Can I ask you something?"

"You just did."

"No, come on. That night, that black kid at the drive-in- what'd you and him have going on?"

She smiles, and then she looks confused. Then she answers me, "nothing. He was my friend. Still is. I guess I had a little crush, and he did, but I was too chicken shit to do anything about it. He was always trying to get me to ditch Two-Bit."

"And go out with him?"

"He asked me out once, that night actually. He asked me to a dance at Booker T. I told him I couldn't go. I told him I was pregnant."

"You knew?"

"By then, yeah. I was pretty sure."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you were being kind of an asshole, and because- shit…Alvin's my friend. I could talk to him."

"What happened with you and Two-Bit?" In the back of mind my I've always wondered, and always been nervous about what the answer might be.

"We got in a big fight and I walked away."

"That's it?"

She smiles. "Well, I mean I literally walked away. It got kind of ugly. I never told him about you. I told him I was dropping him and I was going to try things with Alvin, which was a lie, but…He back-handed me one, and I just started walking. We were way the hell north of town. It was this long, drawn-out thing. He was driving like a maniac. I told him to let me out. He did, and then he got out and we just kept fighting. When he popped me one, I just turned around and started walking. Took me two hours to get back to town."

"He didn't try to pick you up?"

"I don't know what happened to him after that. I think he scared himself. I mean, he's got a temper, but it's not like he made a habit of hitting me. I walked off the road for a ways until I couldn't see him anymore. Maybe he drove back towards town, but he missed me because I was out in the tumbleweeds. I don't know."

"But you and the other guy…?"

"Still friends. His name's Alvin. I guess we kind of grew up and grew out of our hormones, but we still see each other. I worked for him for a while. He runs a bar with his uncle. Used to let me wait tables before I got the job at the school."

I wonder what "we still see each other" means, but I don't ask.

While we've been talking, Everett has been running ahead of us. He stands on his toes to look in shop windows. Sometimes he stops to inspect something on the ground. Now, he begins to hang back. He's tiring out.

He takes his mother's hand and walks like that for a while. Then he takes mine too and says, "I swing. I swing you."

Darby smiles. "You want us to swing you?"

He grins at that. Pure Curly and Matty and Paulie.

Darby looks at me and nods to be sure I understand. She counts "one…two…three…" and we swing him up between us. He says "again" when he comes down and we do it about fifty more times.

When we reach the apartment, he raises his arms and grunts. He wants me to carry him up the stairs. When we get to the top, things get uncomfortable. Darby and I stand still and say nothing. Everett bounces around between us.

"You have to go to bed," Darby tells him and he protests.

I tell him, "I got to go to bed, too. I'll see you later, but it's time for us to go to bed now."

Everett frowns.

"Where's your bed?" He asks. "I want to sleep in your bed."

I'm about to tell him that I don't really have a bed, but Darby cuts in.

"He can drag this out forever," she tells me. "Everett, you sleep here in your bed."

I add, "You listen to your ma," because that's all I have.

I tell them goodnight and leave Darby to handle it. The first drops of rain start to fly as I'm coming down the stairs. They pelt the red-painted footprints and dissolve them into shapeless splatters and then to nothing.

I reach down to touch one and trace the shape of Everett's footprint but it's gone. There's nothing left but water.

That feeling- the tightening up- has been waiting all this time in my stomach. Without Darby and Everett to distract me, it's back again. And it takes over. Without something to distract me, it will stay all night, stay for days.

I don't want to go home, but I don't know where else to go. I just start walking.


	10. Chapter 10

SE Hinton owns it.

**Long As I Can See the Light**

May 1973

I go places. I keep moving all night. I talk to people, but I don't remember any of it. The sick, heavy feeling grows and wraps itself around me. I can't hear or see out.

Sense of time escapes me. _So this is what it feels like to be Curly_, I think to myself. That is the last thing before I pass out.

_I'm talking to Darby. She's sitting in a car at The Dingo. I'm leaning in the window to listen to her. I don't know what she's talking about, but she sure looks good. She looks like she does now, not like in '68. She ain't trying as hard. There's no make-up, no hair spray. She looks alive and cool as hell._

_She asks if I want to see her baby. She calls it "her" baby, not mine or ours. Sound good to me. She turns away from me to pick up the baby, but then the wind comes up. She disintegrates into dust and blows away as she's turning back to me. The baby blows away too. I never get to see him._

* * *

><p>I wake up in the ambulance. I know I'm on my way back to Jack Montgomery. I don't need to ask the medic and he doesn't give me time to anyway. I have an IV in my arm. He sees my eyes flutter and he opens up the drip. I'm out again.<p>

_Vampires. It's the dumbest thing in the world: we're a gang that fights vampires. Except they're rats. We've cornered them in a house on the edge of town. From the looks of the surrounding terrain, it should be Buck Merrill's place, but it's not. _

_Every night we go back and open the doors just a little bit and try to kill the ones who run out. We hit them with shovels, two-by-fours, whatever we can find. If one of us gets bit, we have to kill him before he turns. _

_One night Darby's there with Everett. I don't know why I don't tell her to get him out of there. Then she leaves him with me. Everyone is gone but me and Everett when I open up that farmhouse door. _

_I'm killing rats as fast as I can. I stop for a second and turn to see what Everett's doing. He's just standing there. He's barefoot and there's a bite on his foot. He's staring straight ahead._

_I tell him I love him. I tell him again. I keep telling him over and over because I want to hear him say it back. It's too late. He's already gone. I'm never going to hear him say it._

* * *

><p>I wake up on the open ward. When I try to pull the IV out of my arm, a nurse comes running.<p>

"Am I getting less dangerous?" I ask her.

"Don't do that. What?"

"The first time I was here they put me in restraints in one of the locked rooms. The second time I was in a locked room with no restraints. This time it's neither."

"Would you like to go back to the locked room?"

I catch myself before I say 'yes'. I tell her what I think I should: "I'd like to go home."

"You have to see the doctor first."

This is the third time I've seen him and I still don't know his name. I ask the nurse.

"Dr. Miller."

"Miller, like the beer. I'll remember that."

She doesn't reply. Satisfied that my IV is still where it's supposed to be, she walks away.

I sleep most of the day, or maybe it's longer. When I wake up an orderly who is not the same one from my last visit takes me to the shower room. I ask him if I can shave- which I always do, and he tells me no- which they always do. He gives me scrubs and a gown to wear and takes me to see Dr. Miller.

Dr. Miller salutes me from his desk.

"This is getting to be a habit, Shepard. You go to any AA meetings?"

"I went to see a guy who runs one. He and I grew up together, but I didn't stay for the meeting."

"Why not?"

"I didn't feel like meeting people. I liked just talking to him."

"What did you talk about?"

"Isn't that supposed to be confidential?"

He grins down at my file. I feel like telling him to quit reading it. It's all the same as last time.

"It's okay if you're the one to tell me. What happened this time?"

"Doesn't it say?" I point to the file.

"It says you left your brother's home and were found in a park in a state of acute alcohol toxicity. That means you were damned-near dead. What happened before that?"

I have to think hard. The only thing I remember is the trail of bloody footprints in the alley. Then I remember that they were paint. They were my son's footprints. I met my son. He was beautiful, like Curly when he was small. My son's mother is a beautiful girl who lets our kid paint on the floor of the alley. She lets him run in the paint. He's like Jackson Pollack.

"I have a kid," I tell the doctor. "I went to see my kid. When I left there, I must've got ripped."

"Okay. Is the kid something fairly new? Is it possible that this is causing you stress?"

"Yeah, he's new. I mean, he's four, but he's new to me. He's not a stress, though."

"Shepard, kids are a stressor. They're a responsibility. You've been in a prison camp for two years throwing everything you had into keeping yourself alive. Congratulations- now you're out. Now you have someone else to keep alive as well. Do you have flashbacks?"

"I never done acid, sir."

"Not from that. Do you have flashbacks- vivid memories of the war?"

I shrug and look out the window. The window in the doctor's office is at desk level. That's how you can tell the sane from the not-sane in this place. The nut jobs still get windows, but they're way up high.

"Dumb things remind me of it. Every day little things. Stuff that shouldn't have anything to do with it at all."

"That's what I'm looking for," the doctor says. "They're called triggers. You're in a constant state of anxiety now, like you always have your finger on the trigger. Something comes along and triggers those memories, and- bang- you're right back there again. Is that what it feels like?"

I nod. I don't want to talk about it.

"You're trying to drink so you don't remember, but all that happens is you don't remember the things you did while you're drinking. When you wake up, you still remember the war. Am I right?"

I nod again. I ask him, "How do I make it stop?"

"You don't."

"Well, then I think I'll go back to drinking."

"You can figure out what triggers you, though. If you know when it's going to happen, you can out-think it, move on to something else."

"My kid- my son, he was painting and there was red paint everywhere. It looked like blood, but I don't remember that ever happening over there. I didn't kill no kids."

"It might not mean that. It may have been a lot of blood. It may have been something to do with kids, but it might not have been the two together. The last time you were here, when you fought with your brother-in-law, do you remember seeing the color red then? Is it a similar situation that could have set you off?"

I shake my head. I remember Jarris calling my sister a bitch, but my sister can be a bitch. I can't hardly fault him that.

"Marissa," I say to the doctor.

"Who's Marissa?"

"My niece. My sister and brother-in-law's girl. She was out in the yard with me when I popped her dad one."

He nods. "Your parents around much growing up?"

I have to smile like that. "Just my ma. My dad sort of wandered off."

"Would you say you had a lot of responsibility for your younger brother and sister? You're the oldest, right?"

"Yeah."

"I'm guessing it's something to do with that. It's the children. You take protecting them very seriously. It was your job growing up. You took care of things. You couldn't do it over there, and now you're afraid you won't be able to here anymore."

"I ain't afraid of my son." I tell him. I ain't afraid of anything. Then I remember the dream with the rats, and how I couldn't make Everett answer me. He was changing and I couldn't stop it from happening.

"What?" The doctor asks.

I say, "Nothing," but he knows that's bullshit. He can see that I'm puzzling over it. He waits.

Finally, I say, "I'm not a good person. I never was before, but now…I don't know how to take care of a kid. All I know is how to hurt people, kill them."

When I tried to tell Everett I loved him, it didn't work. It didn't change things. That bite from the vampire rats was bigger than any amount of love I had to give.

The doctor asks me, "You kill you little brother?"

Seems like people keep asking me that- like it's expected.

"Not yet, sir."

"Well, then. You do know more than hurting and killing people."

"My brother went to prison, sir. It was my fault. It was for doing stuff…for living like I taught him."

"Shepard, you were a child then. You weren't supposed to be taking care of other children. You were supposed to be one yourself."

"And what I did in Vietnam was okay because I was a soldier, right?"

He nods. "Right. That doesn't mean it's going to feel okay, though. The point is that you're here now. You're an adult. You get to make the choices you couldn't make as a kid and as a grunt."

I stare passed Dr. Miller at his bookshelf. There's a book about addiction therapy and it makes me think of Steve Randle. There's a copy of Winnie The Pooh, too. I remember reading one of those stories to Curly. He brought it home from school. He used to tell me he was Tigger and I was Eeyore. He used to call Angela "Piglet" and she'd get mad.

"So," the doctor starts to round things up. I feel a panic inside me. I don't want to go yet. I want to keep talking to him until I figure it out.

"I don't remember what happened- most of when we were in country. I can't remember it. How do I find out what happened?"

"Maybe you don't want to know what happened."

"But if I do, it will go away, right?"

"Shepard, you have to go home. You can keep getting yourself sent here, but we don't have what you need. You have to go home and have a life and make new memories. It won't make the old ones go away, but if you work at it, you can have a life that you can live with."

I want to ask him what the fuck that means, but he's shut my file. He's the commanding officer and he's done, so we're done here. When orderly gets me back to the ward, I hand the nurse my discharge papers and tell her I need to call my brother.


	11. Chapter 11

SE Hinton owns Tim and Curly Shepard.

This is probably my favorite chapter. Writing Curly just makes me happy.

**Long As I Can See the Light**

May 1973

"Are you all right?" Darby says when I open the door. I wish she'd quit asking me that.

"What'd you hear?" I ask her, trying to sound irritated and hoping it will put her off of it. It doesn't work.

"What happened to you? Someone said you were in the hospital, and-"

"Someone who?"

"Can I come in?"

I take a step back and decide to assume that it was Curly who told her. He and Darby seem to cross paths.

She steps inside and closes the door behind her. I figure she's really going to let me have it. She stands for an uncomfortably long time just looking up at me and frowning, and then she steps towards me and puts her hands on either side of my face.

"I'm alright," I tell her, but I must not be convincing because she stands up on her toes and kisses me. I put my arms around her and kiss her back. She tastes like bubblegum.

When she pulls away, her eyes are still frantic. She looks me over; she's sure I'm lying. She lets her hands drop to my shoulders. I don't let her go.

"Miss me?" I ask. When she doesn't reply, I kiss her forehead and pull her in tight.

"There's a VA clinic here, Tim. I know why they send guys down to Muskogee."

"I had a little too much to drink. I get to go to AA meetings now," I tell her, and then I want to kick myself for it because now she'll know to ask me if I went. "It ain't going to happen again."

"Don't tell me that. You don't know that. And quit telling me that everything's okay."

"I just said I was okay. I never claimed everything was."

She says "shit" to that and tries to push herself away. I loosen up on her, but keep my fingers locked at the small of her back. She looks up at me, into my eyes. I look away, over her shoulder.

"You on a lunch break or something?" I ask her.

She nods.

"You want to eat lunch?"

She shakes her head, takes a moment to look me over again, and then goes back to kissing me. She wraps her arms around my neck and I pick her up at the waist.

Curly's just gone out for a pack of cigarettes. That could bring him home in the next five minutes or it could be an all day adventure. Our bathroom has a door with a lock, but it's even filthier than the living room. God knows who or what is in Curly's room. I give up on privacy and carry Darby in to the kitchen where we can at least have a little warning if my brother comes through the front door.

I set Darby up on the counter, kiss her again, and then pull her by her hips up to the edge. She hoists herself up enough to let me pull her panties off. We kiss some more while I play around with my hand up her skirt. When she starts to squirm and goes for my belt, I ask her if I need to pull out.

She shakes her head.

"No. This time we're okay."

She smiles at me and we're both lost in the memory of it for an instant. I pull her face to mine to kiss her again. She opens up my jeans and puts her hand inside my shorts. I tell her to wrap her legs around my waist- I love her scrawny, dark legs- and she pulls me close and lets me get inside of her.

At some point, I'm sure I hear the screen door squeak. Darby tells me not to stop though, and so I don't. She gets more talkative then, tells me all kinds of stuff that about makes me lose my mind- how good I make her feel, how she's been thinking about me all day. When it's over, though, her tone changes. She gets serious again and tells me how scared she was. She thought she was going to lose me again.

I brush her hair back from her face and try at her without looking her in the eye. I lean over and pick her panties up off the floor and hand them to her.

Because I want to hear her say it again, I ask her, "You really been thinking about me all day?"

"I been thinking about you for three days. You just disappeared. You got to understand- I was a little on edge. I introduced you to Ev and then you were just gone."

"You think I'd do that? Just meet him and bail out like that."

"I know plenty of guys who have kids they got no problem bailing out on."

"Well, I ain't one of those guys."

"Spoken like a man who just got laid," she says.

"Yeah, and you're suddenly pretty nervous for having showed up here in the middle of the day wanting it like that. How come you ain't so brave anymore?"

She's pulled her panties as far up her legs as she can while she's still sitting. She hops down from the counter and pulls them up the rest of the way. She straightens out her skirt with her hands and then twists her hips back and forth to see that it swishes to her liking. I sure like it well enough.

"I got to go back to work," she says.

She starts to walk past me. I grab her arm and pull her back.

"When am I going to see you again?"

"Whenever. Whenever you want, I guess. You want to see me again?"

"I just asked you, didn't I?"

"Just me or me and Everett?"

"Both of you. Together and separately."

That makes her laugh. She squeezes her eyes shut tight and opens them again.

"Okay," she says. "How about we try it just you and me next time? You want me to make dinner?"

"I think you'd better. Have to keep my strength up."

She shoves me away from her.

"I'm going back to work. I'll take Ev to my brother's and I'll make dinner tonight."

"I'll be there," I tell her.

When she opens the front door I can hear her say something to Curly. I cringe when I smell the smoke from his cigarette blow into the house. I zip my jeans up and wait. He doesn't come inside. He's waiting on the step for me to come out so that he can taunt me in the open. I give in and open the door.

I don't want to know so I don't ask how long he's been sitting here.

"My, she's vocal," he says, looking up at me through his cigarette smoke. He's grinning.

"Shut up."

"She's got a filthy fucking mouth. She got any sisters?"

"Shut it. She's the mother of my child."

"Yeah," he says and then adds dreamily, "that's awesome."

I turn around and go back into the house. He's right behind me. He catches the door before I can slam it. I go to the bathroom and he heads to the kitchen. I can hear him in there saying, "Oh God, Tim…don't stop, Tim…do it harder, Tim…" in a little voice as he runs the dishwater.

It's enough to keep me grinning as I wash my face off and look myself over in the mirror. It keeps me from wondering just what the hell Darby thought she was going to lose. If I didn't have Curly to entertain me, I'd be thinking about all the trouble I've brought down on Darby. She should be so lucky as to lose a fucker like me.


	12. Chapter 12

SE Hinton owns it.

**Long As I Can See The Light**

May 1973

The phone wakes me up. I have no idea how long it's been ringing. I can't speak when I pick up. I need to spit. My throat is dry, like I've swallowed a mouthful of dust. I don't remember falling asleep.

"Hello?" She asks. "Hello? Tim?"

I cough and clear my throat. "Yeah. Yeah, it's me."

"You are there. It's Darby."

"I know." I don't know if it's because I recognize her voice or if I expected to hear it because she was just here. I'm not quite awake.

"I was wondering if you wanted to try something."

"That's a hell of a question to ask a man at two o'clock on a Tuesday."

"We've been there and done that, haven't we? Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to try hanging out with Everett?"

"Sure," I tell her.

"They sprung this meeting on me after school. I have to be there. Can you go pick him up? He's at Head Start. Just head back to my place. I shouldn't be too long."

"Yeah, I can do that." I tell her. She gives me the address to the Head Start. It's not far from where Steve holds his AA meetings.

"So, at three-thirty. I should be home by four-thirty, then we'll figure out dinner. He'll go with you just fine. He likes you," she sounds like she's trying to convince herself.

"It'll be alright," I say. "Three-thirty. He need to eat or anything?"

"No, they have a snack. Just run him into the ground. God, he has so much energy. I love it, but he's going to drive me to the grave." She pauses and says something to someone behind her. "Tim? I got to go. Three-thirty?"

"Yeah, okay." She's going to call the Head Start at three-thirty-two to see if I've showed up; I can feel it.

She hangs up. I check the clock. There's plenty of time, but I go looking for a clean t-shirt and hit the shower.

* * *

><p>The Head Start class room looks like someone stepped on an ant hill. The kids are wired, all ready to go home. They all kind of look alike. It's hard to pick out the teachers in amongst them. They're all down on the floor with the kids.<p>

I stand in the doorway next to a desk for a minute before an adult spots me and comes over to meet me.

"I think Darby Crawford called," I tell her. "I'm here to pick up Everett."

I still don't know what last name he goes by.

The teacher beams. She says, "Oh, you're Tim."

I nod.

She turns around to the fray and calls out, "Everett, your friend Tim is here."

And he appears. His head pops up from behind a wall of blocks. He's playing with some other boys there. When he sees me, he drops what he's doing and comes running over.

The teacher tells him to get his bag. I follow him because I don't feel comfortable standing still. Everett is talking to me, but I can't hear half of what he's saying.

Everett gets his back pack, which doesn't appear to have anything in it, and takes me by the hand. We say goodbye to his teacher.

Outside, he tells me, "I had a good day."

"Good," I say. "Me too."

"Are we going to your house?"

"Nope, we're going to your house."

"And we'll see my mom?"

"Yeah, you're ma's on her way. She's still at work."

We get to the car. I'm not sure if he should sit in the front or the back. My old man used to let me sit on his lap and steer. I let Everett in front on the passenger side. I decide to leave steering for another day.

"Everett, what's your last name?" I ask him.

"Everett," he says. He's fiddling with the handle for the window. I reach across and roll it down.

I rethink the question. "What's your name? Your whole name?"

"Everett Aiden Crawford," he says. He's sitting up on his knees looking out the window. His back is to me. I'm not one hundred percent sure I heard "Aiden" right, but he definitely said "Crawford". I wonder what it would take to change that. I wonder, too, if it's too late- would it screw the kid up to change his name now.

I tell him to sit down and put the car in gear. The sun is warm. Everett yawns.

"You tired?" I ask him.

"No," he says and sits up straighter. "I can't go to bed."

"Nobody said anything about bed. I'm just taking you home. You hungry?"

He nods.

"What do you want to eat?

He doesn't know. I suggest a few things, but Everett doesn't seem to like food much. I begin to suspect he just nodded to be agreeable.

I drive away from downtown and take him towards the Ribbon. I've hardly been there myself since I've been back. It looks strange in the daylight. It looks empty. There's so much more space when you can see it.

Everett seems to recognize where we are. He bounces a little in his seat.

"I want ice cream," he says.

"You can't have ice cream. You ain't had dinner yet. Your ma will end me."

"I want ice cream," he repeats.

Isn't this what a noncustodial parent is supposed to do- give the kid all the things the full-time parent won't? I haven't been around for four years. That gives me the right to spoil him, doesn't it? I think of Darby and how hard she's been trying. I don't want to piss her off.

I tell Everett, "no ice cream. You eat some real food and we'll get ice cream later."

We go through a laundry list of things he doesn't like. He agrees to some chicken and I find a place to pull in. We get in line at the window. I don't recognize Jarris until I'm right up behind him in line. I haven't seen him since the night I beat him up and they took me back to Muskogee.

He sees me from the corner of his eye. He nods a little without turning all the way around.

"Who's kid?" He asks.

I look away when I answer him. "My girlfriend's."

She ain't my girlfriend. It ain't right to say she is, but I can't say Everett's my kid out in public yet. I don't know what else to tell him.

Jarris looks suspicious. "Lucky her. You're quite the family man."

"You wrote the book," I reply. I feel Everett's hand against my leg. I look down at him and he's looking up at me. He's frowning. I wink at him. When his face doesn't change, I take a hold of his hand.

"What's his name?" Everett asks me after Jarris takes his food and walks out of earshot.

I tell him and Everett replies, "he's mean."

I can't keep from smiling. The kid's dead on.

I tell him. "He's gone now. Eat your food."

"Is he going home to his house?"

"Yeah, he's going back to his house. He ain't going to bother you."

He seems satisfied with that, although he watches my brother-in-law until he gets into his car and drives back out on to the Ribbon. He picks at his chicken, taking a few bites, and then feeds a couple to me. For as much as he reminds me of Curly, the way his moves is all his mother. Maybe all kids just remind me of Curly.

We finish the chicken between us and get back in the car. It's almost four-thirty. Darby will think we've driven off the face of the earth. I gun the engine a little as we hit the four-lane.

Everett asks, "Is this car fast?"

"Can be," I tell him. The kid's after my heart. _Shit, yeah, this car's fast, but you ain't going to find out today. _

He tries anyway. "Can it go fast now?"

"This ain't fast?"

"No, really fast."

"No, not really fast. The cops will get us. Then your ma'd have to bail us out of jail. She'd be mad."

He ponders this.

He tells me, "My mom's boyfriend went to jail."

I wonder if he means Two-Bit. I thought she'd been done with him long ago.

"Really? What's his name?"

"Joey. Mama doesn't like him anymore. She said 'no, no, no' and he went home."

I don't like the sound of that. I don't know how to get him to elaborate. Everett is yawning again. By the time I come up with what I think is a clever way to ask about this Joey, he's slumping over to his side. He's asleep by the time we get to the apartment.

Darby is waiting on the step. She doesn't look worried, just bored.

I carry Everett up the stairs.

She whispers, "When'd he got to sleep? Shit, he's going to be up all night."

"Who's Joey?"

She scowls. "None of your damned business. Where you two get off to?"

"Took him out to the Ribbon. Ate some chicken, talked cars. So Joey's in the cooler?"

"Damnit, cars ain't all you talked about, apparently." She rolls her eyes and takes Everett from me. She takes him inside. I wait on the porch since she didn't ask me in.

When she returns and sits next to me on the step, I say, "So, I hear you don't like Joey anymore. Want to tell me about that?"

"No, I really don't."

"Is it because he's not as good a lay as me?"

She elbows me. "Yes, Tim. That's it."

"That's what I figured." I let it be for a moment. When she doesn't say anything, I ask her, "Did he hurt you?"

"It's really none of your business."

"Was Everett there? That makes it my business."

"Does it now? You weren't here. There's nothing you could have done. It's over. So, it's none of your business."

"Is this a habit with you? Guys knocking you around? You said Two-Bit popped you one."

She looks out across the alley. She's steamed. I can tell by the way she tucks her hair behind her ear.

"You make it sound like it's something I go looking for."

"Didn't mean it like that. I just know how my ma was. I love my ma, but she was a fucking drunk-magnet."

Darby sighs. The sun is setting behind the building opposite us. The light is fading, but I can still see her chin quiver. I try to put my arm around her, but she pushes me off.

"I'm sorry," I tell her. "You're right. I'm done with it. Just so know, though, I ain't ever going to hit you."

"Why are you telling me that? You and me aren't together."

She's just saying it to be mean, because I've trapped her into talking about something she doesn't want to talk about. I know there's nothing more to it, but it still hurts. So I badger her back.

"Why not?"

"I don't even know you."

"Get to know me."

"Are you going to let me do that? You were some big-time operator five years ago, and I know enough to know you never quit get to the center of those guys."

I want a cigarette, but I can't smoke here. I take my matches out of my pocket and light one. I let it fall down into the alley below.

Then I admit, "I was never big-time anything, Darby. I was just a hood."

"I want you to tell me what it was like over there- what it was really like."

"Nope. No reason to talk about that."

"Why not?"

"Because it's over and done with. Not like I'm going back."

"So tell me. Why won't you tell me?"

"Same reason you don't want to talk about Joey."

"That's not exactly comforting. If I tell you about Joey, will you…"

I shake my head. I light another match. My stomach is churning. Sitting on Darby's steps in the alley feels like being on a trapeze platform a million feet in the air.

"How about we just leave it there?" I say. I pat her thigh and stand up.

She stands up too. "Where are you going?"

"None of your business," I tell her. I raise my arms up like I'm throwing it back at her for all the times she said it. I take the steps two at a time back down into the alley. It's dark at the bottom. She can't see me, but I can still see her. The wind is coming up. It blows her skirt around her knees. I expect to see her turn to dust and blow away.


	13. Chapter 13

SE Hinton owns Tim and Steve.

**Long As I Can See the Light**

May 1973

The group is just breaking up. I wait for them all to file out the door before I step in and nod a greeting to Steve.

"You're late," he says.

"Meant to be. That…" I jerk my head in the direction the group just went, "that still scares me."

"Used to scare me, too," he says. "Funny. People used to shoot at us, but we're scared of drinking coffee with a bunch of old drunks."

I ask him, "You got a minute?"

"I'd like to think so."

He looks up in the direction of the ceiling. I get the joke, but religion scares me about as much as baring my soul to old drunks. To me, God is a sister with a ruler standing over my second grade desk and calling me "Timothy". I'd like to stay clear of God.

"If that's what's keeping you from coming, don't let it. We go pretty easy on the "higher power" stuff here," Steve says.

I don't know what keeps me from coming.

I tell him, "I can't do it."

"Can't do what?"

"Any of it." I throw my hands up. "Be the dad, be the boyfriend, be a guy with a job. No matter where I am, who I'm with- I feel like I'm watching it from inside a net. Or a bubble. My head's a million miles away."

"Well, you're here and not in the bar so something's different."

I sit down without asking him if I can. Steve perches himself on a table opposite me. He looks down at me and it reminds me of years ago when he'd be looking down at me leaning through the window of a car he'd tuned up for me to drag. He'd always tell me, when I'd ask him how it handled, "don't worry about it, man. I already done all the work. You just got to sit there and turn that big wheel around."

I look back at him and frown.

"What's your motivation?" He asks. "What motivated you to do this instead of go on a bender?"

I have to grin at that. I wasn't even five o'clock when I left Darby's. It's after eight now. It's hardly been a direct route between her place and Steve.

"What motivated me walk around for hours until I knew your meeting buddies would be gone?"

"Yeah. I know you ain't here because I'm so damned pretty. I mean- I am, but Darby's prettier."

I rub my hands over my face and look down at the floor again when he says her name.

"Must be her then," I say.

"Must be. Or maybe not. Maybe it's your kid."

"He's a neat kid," I tell him. " Don't know what the hell he's talking about half the time, but I know he's smart. He's intuitive, you know? We ran into my brother-in-law, and that kid knew just to steer clear of him."

"Jarris- yeah, I steer clear of him. So you've been spending some time with your boy?"

"I only seen him twice, but- yeah. Got to hang out today."

"What about Darby Jean?"

I shake my head. "Was supposed to have dinner with her but I picked a fight and walked away."

Steve grins knowingly at me. He pushes his curly hair back with his fingers. I think it's longer than the last time I saw him. Steve's going to turn into a hippy. That's going to rattle my grasp on reality, for damned sure.

"Seems to me you got two problems, Shepard."

"Only two?"

"Well, and Curly. The first one is you're trying to wheedle out a relationship with a girl you didn't have a relationship with before you left for 'Nam. You think you got some connection to her, but you don't. Other than the kid. Doesn't mean you_ can't_ have a relationship with her. It's just that you don't have a history now, but you want to act like you do. You don't know what she's been doing the last few years and she doesn't know shit about you."

I nod. "That's what we got into about, actually. We were trying to trade information back and forth about stuff neither of us wanted to talk about that much."

"And I'm sure I can guess what she wanted you to give up."

"Yeah, that. Thing is I get the feeling she might get it. I mean, she's never been in a prison camp, but Everett- my boy- let it slip that she had some creepy fucker for a boyfriend. She don't want to talk about it, of course, but she's been roughed up. I can tell. So, she's got shit hanging over her, too. Same as me."

"So why don't you talk about it?"

"Because I don't know what mine is. I don't remember. I have dreams, but they ain't like things that happened. They're all supernatural and shit. Vampires and armies of rats."

Steve raises an eyebrow.

"Shut up," I tell him and he laughs.

"Nah, I have one where there's a fairy. Got a wand and a sparkly dress. Whole nine yards. I'm sure it's symbolic of heroin, but it's still a weird fucking dream."

I grin at him. "How do you explain that to people? We went to war, got shot at, came back traumatized, and now we have dreams about fairies. Oh, the things the VC did to us."

"Feels better to talk about it, though, don't it?"

"Fine, I guess so." I roll my eyes at him. I offer him a cigarette and he takes it. We smoke in silence for a while.

After I've stubbed out my cigarette and exhaled for a final time, I say, "I just wish I could get past the feeling that she's pissed because she's realized she got herself knocked up by a guy who ain't got anything to offer her."

"She ain't pissed about that. She's pissed because she knows you do got something to offer her, but you ain't living up to it. You're the one who's deluded, Shepard, not her."

"You're sure about that? What if I'm being punished? I wasn't nobody's darling before I left. What if I did something over there, and…shit, you know the stories. Some of our guys went off and did vile shit. I can't remember and it's driving me nuts. I remember the camp. Everyone makes a big deal about the camp. I was there for a long time, but…well, it was just a long time. After '70, you know, the UN came in and we got soap and girlie magazines."

I get up and go to the table by the wall with the coffee. There's a little left in the pot. I pour myself a cup, smell it and add sugar.

"I remember every single day of being locked up in The Zoo. I was in-country for almost two years, and I don't remember anything. I know I wasn't fighting vampire rats and heroin fairies."

Steve begins moving his chairs. For the first time it dawns on me that the chairs don't need to be moved anywhere. The straightening up is compulsive- it's a choice between that or cooking up.

"Maybe you can't remember for a reason. If it's this bad now, maybe it'd be worse if you remembered."

"That's what the doctor at Jack told me. More or less."

Steve smiles to himself. He seems pleased that he's in-line with the doctor.

"Maybe he's right. Coming from me, I know this sounds nuts, but you got to chill out, Shepard. Just take it easy. Take it easier on yourself."

"I find I chill out better when I've had a few."

"Until you find yourself velcro'd to a bed in Muskogee. You got to learn to chill out without that, man."

"Have you learned how?"

He shrugs. For a second he looks wistful. "Some days are better than others. It's a process. Some days, I suck at it. Some days, I get it right. The goal is not perfection. The goal is doing better."

"Do they give you a book to read this shit from?"

"Actually, yes."

I have to grin at that.

"You do the right thing once, and you'll know," he says. "It gets easier after that to do it again."

"You know what gets me? I loved my dad and he was worthless. I know my kid will love me no matter what I do. I just don't want him to end up like me."

Steve nods. "That I can relate to. It's a good goal. So, we start working towards being the guys we do want our kids to be like."

"You got kids?" I ask him. I never asked before.

"Yeah. She won't let me see 'em, though. She says I need two years. That woman's a hard-ass. They'll let me run a meeting with a year of being clean, but she wants two before she'll let me see my kids again. Count yourself lucky Darby's still puts her energy into worrying about you."

I smile a little at that. Darby about busted down my door and fucked me stupid when I came back. She said she was worried and she had a hell of a way of showing it.

I down the coffee and stand up. I'm exhausted and I don't know why.

"I got to go, Randle. Thanks, man."

"No problem. Next Tuesday?"

"We'll see."

"Chicken shit," he says, but he's grinning at me. In his eyes, there's just a little bit of that taunt left he had when we were kids. Steve Randle always knew how to make a dare.


	14. Chapter 14

SE Hinton owns the Shepard clan. Merle Haggard owns "Mama Tried".

**Long As I Can See the Light**

May 1973

Curly and I draw cards to decide who cleans the bathroom and who gets the kitchen. I drew low and got the bathroom. Curly thinks he won. He would be the winner, if I cared.

We've got the radio blaring and he's singing along to "Mama Tried" about as loud as he can. I'm on my second beer. I figure it ain't a problem to be drinking if I'm also doing something productive.

I'm under the sink chasing a spider when the phone starts ringing. It takes a few rings for it to register through the sound of Merle and Curly. I shout at Curly to shut up.

He shouts back, "what?"

I get the phone before the radio. When I turn that off, Curly's still singing, "I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole…hey!"

"Shut up," I yell at him. "I'm on the phone. Hello?"

It's Darby. It's sooner than I expected to hear from her. I'd have liked to have been sober when I did. Her voice is shaky. She's scared and the first thing I think is that someone has broken in to that ratty apartment of hers.

"He's sick. Ev's really sick. I need you to come over here."

Need me for what?

"Well, baby…" I start to say, but she cuts me right off.

"You said you wanted to be his dad, so get your ass over here and be his dad."

"Baby, I'm a little drunk."

She whispers "shit" under her breath and she might as well have been right there to slap me.

She asks, "How drunk? Can you drive?"

"I guess I could. Ain't drunk enough to believe I can practice medicine. Why don't you take him to a doctor?"

"You got money for a doctor?"

I don't and neither does she. Our son is sick and we can't take care of him. What if he's really sick? What if he dies? It will be my fault for being a drunk just like my old man.

"Tim?"

"Yeah, I'm coming. I'll be there in a minute." I put the phone down and pick up the coffee pot on the stove. I shake it a little, hoping to hear something swish inside, but it's empty. I drink a glass of water instead. Curly is watching me.

"You leaving?" He asks. "What's up with her?"

"Kid's sick. She wants me to come over there."

"What for?"

I have no idea. That he's asking just goes to show how we both know I have nothing to offer the situation. Darby should know better.

"Because she wants me over there."

"You should call Angel. One of her kids is always sick. She'll know what to do."

I shake my jacket to hear my keys. I don't bother to tell him that Darby has been a mother as long as Angel has and Darby's been doing it by herself.

I push past him and he reaches in his pocket for his wallet.

"I got some money," he says, holding it out to me. "How much does it cost to call a doctor?"

"I don't know."

Curly pushes his money at me again anyway. "Just take it. Buy him some orange juice maybe."

I nod and mutter "thanks" and then I'm out the door.

* * *

><p>Darby's left the door open for me. I go inside and she's just coming out of the kitchen with a towel. When I reach out for her, she takes a step back.<p>

"He puked all over me," she says.

"Well, then no hugs for you."

"I think he's fine. I'm sorry. I just…I hate when he can't breathe, and then I get scared, and he gets scared. You're never scared, and I just...I think he's okay now. He's asleep. I'm sorry."

"For what? Do you need anything? I got a little cash. Curly gave me some, too. You want me to call someone?"

She shakes her head. "I want to take a shower, but I've been too scared to leave him. Will you just sit with him?"

"Yeah."

I follow her back to the bedroom. I've never been there before. It's a tiny room with a single bed and a dresser. She's hung up blue curtains and there's a kid-sized star quilt on the wall like the ones the Osage women wrap their babies in.

There are several pillows stacked up on the bed. She must have been trying to keep him sitting upright, but Everett has squirreled his way down to lay flat. He's lying on his side. His breathe rattles. It can't help that he's got his face buried in the back of a stuffed tiger.

I take my jacket off and I can smell the cigarette smoke on it. I toss it on the floor and pull the curtain back to crack the window. There's a small blue star flag hanging there.

Darby is still standing in the doorway.

"I guess we can take that down now," she says.

I stand there and stare at it. She hasn't told him that I'm his father, but I know her- she'd explain to him what the flag was for. She'd make him understand that they were waiting for someone.

"Leave it," I tell her. "I'm not sure I'm all back yet."

I open the window and sit myself down on the edge of the bed. Darby stands there, still hovering, so I shoo at her with my hand. She looks embarrassed and steps out, leaving the door open a bit.

I sit there in the half-light and listen to Everett's chest rattle. He sighs a couple of times and it startles me each time. He stays asleep, and Darby returns with her hair tied up wearing a t-shirt and a pair of cut-off pajama bottoms.

"Okay?" She asks.

I give her a thumbs-up. Again, she stands there and hovers. I want to hold her in my lap, but I'm too close to the edge of the bed. I nod towards the space between Everett and wall instead. She climbs in and slips under the covers with him. As soon as she does, he inches up against her and buries his face in her shirt. He slides one hand down inside through the neck.

"I nursed him," she explains in a whisper. "Now he's got to fall asleep with his hand down my shirt."

"Can't blame him," I say.

She grins and then adjusts herself around him. When I think she's asleep, I reach out and stroke her hair. It takes a while, but I finally fall asleep too.

* * *

><p><em>January 1969<em>

_We were walking. They called it patrol, but really we were just walking around with no idea where we were going or who we were going to meet. One time, we met a tiger. Sometimes we met VC. Sometimes we met more of us. _

_We were walking down a muddy, pot-holed road with jungle on either side. I was sure we were going to die because we couldn't see two feet into the jungle and anything could be in there watching us. The CO wanted to stay on the road, though. He was an idiot, but there was nothing we could do about it._

_We all heard the engine at the same time. We couldn't see it, but it sounded like a truck. With no way of knowing who was behind the wheel, there was nothing to do but jump into the brush and hide on the side of the road._

_When it got close enough, we could see it wasn't a military vehicle. We started to creep out into the open. The driver waved and slowed down. He was South Vietnamese and headed to Saigon. Our CO was an idiot, but he spoke some Vietnamese, so they had a little conversation._

_The rest of us stood around and waited. Faces started to peek over the sides of the truck at us- small faces. The truck was loaded up with children. They looked at us, then at each other. Some of them ducked back down. After a while, while our CO and the driver talked, small hands started to reach out towards us from the truck._

_We looked at one another. Someone asked what did we think they wanted. Someone else suggested food. The guy next to me took out his rations and broke off a piece of cracker. I did the same and we stepped up to the truck. The little fingers took the crackers from us, and then more hands popped out._

_We gave them everything we had. It became a game, like hide-and-seek except it was hands-and-crackers. All of their hands would disappear back in the truck and we'd step back to the side of the road. As soon as we had, all the hands would pop out again. The kids started to giggle. We started to tease them and laugh with them._

_When our CO and the driver had finished talking, the driver put the truck back in gear and they pulled away. We stood in the middle of the road waving at them. The kids waved back._

"_What was that?" Someone asked the CO._

"_He's a priest. He's taking them to Saigon to an orphanage."_

"_What happened to their parents?"_

"_Killed. They were out working the rice paddies or something and we bombed it. Just kids and old people left in the village. They couldn't take care of the kids anymore, so they're letting the priest take them to Saigon. Come on."_

_We started walking again._

_The guy next to me says, "Did he say we bombed them?"_

_I nodded at him. I was sure that's what he'd said. _

_Then the ground shook. We couldn't see the truck anymore, but the blast was enough to send a couple of the guys falling into the mud. The plume of flame rose up above the trees. There were no cries or screams. Everything was gone._

_On instinct, we started to run in the direction of the blast, but the CO shouted at us to get back. "They'll be coming," he told us. "The VC will come down to check it out. We got to get out of here."_

_We kept walking. We didn't have anything to eat because we gave it all away to those kids. There was food when we got back to camp, but I couldn't eat a thing._


	15. Chapter 15

SE Hinton owns Tim Shepard and The Outsiders.

**Long As I Can See the Light**

May 1973

I'm drenched in sweat when I wake up. I sit up and they both make irritated little grunts on either side of me. Darby has her hand on my chest. She tries to push me back down.

"You'll wake him up," she mumbles. She's not even awake herself.

I tell her, "I got to go, baby."

"No, you don't. Just go back to sleep. You'll wake him up."

Everett has his feet on me. Darby must have gotten up at some point and then come back. They've changed positions and I'm in the middle. When I sat up, Everett tried to worm closer and now he's almost underneath me.

I prop myself up on my elbows and look around the room, trying to get my bearings.

"I'm going to go wash my face," I tell Darby.

Her eyes are open now. She's watching me. I can tell she doesn't believe that I'm not going to get out of bed and make a run for it.

Still, she says, "if he wakes up, he'll want a drink. Can you bring some water back?"

"Yeah," I tell her. I crawl over her. She reaches up and I hover there above her for a second. She runs her thumb over my eyebrow to wipe the sweat away. I want to kiss her, but it feels weird with Everett right there. I'd like nothing more than to sink inside her and forget everything else. Maybe if I putter around long enough she'll follow me out into the kitchen.

I splash water over my face in the kitchen sink and then stand for a while staring out the window. It's early in the morning. The sun is coming up. Strands of light tear through the trusses on the Arkansas River Bridge. It's too early for traffic, but I can hear the busses moving on the street.

I get a glass for Everett and fill it with water from the sink. When I turn around, I'm faced with a refrigerator covered with his drawings. Most of them don't make any more sense than the dreams I keep having. Some of them are labeled- "bridge", "cars going fast", "balloons". Without the labels, I'd have no idea.

For just a second, they draw me away from my self-loathing and I know Steve is right. I'm not the worst thing that could happen to the kid. I once watched a bus full of children blow up. They'll never get to draw pictures or paint in the alley. At least Everett has me and his ma.

I creep back into Everett's room. Darby is half-awake and frowning.

"Thought you were going to make a run for it," she says.

"Crossed my mind," I tell her. Then I motion for her to get up with my finger. "Come here."

"No, it's cold."

"Just come on. I won't let you be cold."

She rolls her eyes, stretches, and- most likely on purpose- takes fucking forever to get out of bed. I wrap my arms around her and we shuffle out in to the front room towards the kitchen.

"What are we doing?" She asks.

"We're going in here. We're going to watch the sun come up."

She doesn't say anything. When we get to the kitchen window, she lays her head back against my chest. We stare at the expanding ball of fire in the sky until the sky takes on color and the light begins to hurt.

"Do you want some coffee?" She asks.

"Yeah. You want me to go get something to eat?"

"You going to come back?"

"I said I'd drink coffee."

She shrugs and pulls away. I go back into Everett's room to get my jacket. Everett stirs when I pick it up. He mumbles something in his sleep. I put my hand on his chest and he quiets down again.

"You going to work?" I ask Darby when I get back to the front room.

She shakes her head. "I'm going to call in for the morning. Whenever he does this- whenever he has an attack- he can about sleep till noon. I'm just going to let him."

I nod and tell her I'll be right back.

She calls after me, "then are you going to tell me?"

"I'll tell you something," I say. "I'll tell you a hell of a story about something."

I'm out the door. I can smell a bakery nearby, although I'm not quite sure where it is. Finding it will give me a few minutes to think of which story I'm going to tell Darby.

* * *

><p>I return to Darby's with cinnamon rolls in a bag and tell her a different story than the one she's expecting to hear. No one should have to hear that one, though. Maybe Steve- I'll save it for him and his group. They've seen it so it won't come as any big shock.<p>

Darby and I sit down out on her porch above the alley. We sit next to each other on the top step, just like we did the other night when we got into it and I left. It's like we're starting all over again.

I drink my coffee and watch her unwind her cinnamon roll. I shake my head at her because it's something a little kid would do, and she says, "What?"

"I didn't blow up The Dingo, you know," I say.

"I know. Curly did."

"Yeah, but I didn't tell him to. It wasn't some kind of plot against your buddy…"

"Alvin." I never want to say his name, but she always has to remind me.

"Yeah. It wasn't because of that."

She doesn't ask me anything more about it. The Dingo thing was resolved her long ago, I realize. Her friend didn't get hurt. She never blamed me. Other things have become more important.

"When I was a kid," I tell her, "my old man was a way worse drunk than I am. I keep telling myself that anyway. I think I'm starting to catch up. My parents would split up, and my ma'd take Angela because she's a girl. Curly and me'd stay with my dad, but he'd end up leaving me in charge of Curly and take off. One time- I don't know how old we were, but we were old enough to go to school- Curly told a teacher that our dad wasn't at home. Maybe he didn't tell her. Maybe he told his friends, and she overhead it. I don't know. Curly just runs his mouth."

Curly ran his mouth, and phone calls started getting made. The Sisters called our house and no one was there. The kept Curly in the office with them all day- which I guess he didn't mind because they kept feeding him- but the lines got crossed somewhere and I got out of school before they caught me. I waited around for him like I was supposed to. When he didn't come out of the school, I went home to see if he was there.

There was no one at our house. I waited for Curly and he didn't come. I waited for my old man because I knew if he showed himself he could make it alright. People were afraid of him. He'd get Curly back. Neither of them showed up, though.

"Did your parents ever tell you about the…shit, I don't know what they're called anymore- some Indian thing from way back? My ma used to tell us they'd get us if we stayed out after dark. Her grandmother used to use it on her."

Darby grins and nods. "I can't remember either. Yeah, my parents used to say they looked like children, but they'll swallow us up. We couldn't go too far from the house because they'd get us."

"Yeah, so I was still a little kid, right? When it started getting dark and he still didn't come back, I was sure they'd got Curly. Shit, then I started convincing myself that maybe they got my dad. I didn't know whether to go looking for him or my brother or just stay put. I stayed there by myself for two days. Once a priest and a teacher from school came by, but I hid from them."

"What happened?"

"They just came home. The school found my old man, dragged him out of the bar or the cat house or whatever gutter he lying in. They sobered him up and gave Curly back. The two of them just came waltzing back through the door."

"Did you get in trouble?"

I shake my head. "Nah, I mean, what's my old man going to say? He told us we couldn't ever tell our ma because she'd never let him see us again, which in retrospect didn't make any difference because he took off after a while anyway."

Darby licks some icing off of her fingers. She's frowning and thinking.

"So, this is what you've been trying to so hard not to tell me all this time?"

The way she says it makes me think that she still doesn't get it: everything that happened in Vietnam, it was nothing compared to what happened before. I thought I could handle Vietnam because I grew up in a war zone. It didn't work that way. I was tapped out before I got in country or taken to The Zoo.

I wish for a cigarette. I inhale and exhale like I actually have one. Then I say to her, "I'm trying to tell you that that I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to be a parent. I know how to do a lot of shit. I can survive for two years in a prison camp. I can work a job, come home and fuck you all you want, but I don't know what to do with that kid."

She shrugs. "That not what I hear."

"Yeah? What do you hear?"

"He talks about you. I think he pretends he's you when he plays with his friends. He says you're going to teach him how to drive fast." She pauses and raises an eyebrow at me. "Not too fast, okay?"

I stop and rub the bridge of my nose with my fingers.

"It's just like it was with Curly, though. Look what I did with Curly."

"What did you do with Curly that was so bad? One time you lost him, Tim. It was one time. And _they_ didn't get him. There is no _they_. What he did at the drive-in, he did that on his own. That was his decision."

"I taught him how to make a pipe bomb. That's another spectacular life-skill I possess."

"Are you going to teach that to Everett?"

"No."

"There, then. You've learned something from it. You can do this parenting thing. It doesn't take an advanced degree. All I done since last night was stand back and get puked on."

I sit up again and lean back against the railing. I ask her:

"What about the rest of it? Are we going to do this boyfriend-girlfriend thing?"

"I don't know. I might make it kind of difficult. I've gotten pretty used to being without."

I find it funny that Darby thinks she is going to be the difficult element in the relationship. Maybe it's an excuse. Maybe she's looking for a reason not to.

"I'm scared of you," she says softly, like she knows what I'm thinking.

"Yeah, me too."

"I just really want to know that it's going to be okay, but when you say it I don't believe you."

"Great," I say. I think about Steve and his kid's mom, how she won't let him see him for another year. I don't want to go for another year without seeing Everett again.

"I don't know what to tell you, Darby. I don't know if me being around him is good for him, but I get this feeling like I ain't going to get better without him."

When I look up, she's crying. There are tears spilling down her face. I reach out to put my arm around her. This time, she lets me. She sobs into my chest and I stroke her hair. Neither of us hears the door open. We aren't aware he's standing there until we hear his voice:

"Mama, are you sad?"

It startles us both. Darby sits up and wipes her face. I pull my arm away and then reach back to herd Everett in between us.

"Mama's sad?" He asks me.

"Yeah, I think so."

The truth is his ma is scared. She's so certain I ain't a bad guy. She's probably the only person in the world who believes that- her and Everett.

Everett crawls into Darby's lap and pushes her face up to look at him. He tells her not to be sad anymore and it makes my stomach lurch. I remember this. I've done it a million times- told my ma not to be sad anymore when my old man took off. Except this time, I'm him, but I'm still here. It's as surreal as any of my dreams and flashbacks ever have been.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do. She'll be sad if I leave, but she'll be sorry if I stay. I'm still convinced of that.

"What should we do?" I ask Everett. "We can't let Mama be sad? What do you think we should do?"

He turns and looks at me. He nods. He agrees, but he's waiting for me to come up with the answer.

* * *

><p>That's it. That's right, there is no resolution. As someone with a certain amount of experience in Darby's shoes, I can tell you that's pretty much the way it goes. Thanks for all the time spent reading and reviewing. It was an interesting ride and now I think I'm going to go work on something a little more light.<p> 


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